Subject: CTR Saturday Clips 2-28-15
From: "Burns Strider (CTRFF)" <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Cc: CTRAllStaff <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 11:58:54 -0500
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Good Saturday to all, yall. Today is the last day of CPAC. We have been monitoring so you don't have to. Below, before the usual daily clips I have posted two videos from this morning of CPAC panels... Poignant reminders of the need for our unified and strong voices. B. 

CPAC panel on President Obama's religion: Perkins on Obama's Christianity at CPAC 2-28-15

CPAC panel on public schools: http://youtu.be/MGTdj4rPi8c

Correct The Record Saturday February 28, 2015 Roundup:

Headlines:

ABC News: “Rand Paul Wows CPAC Crowd, Talks Privacy, Tax Cuts, Hillary Clinton”

“The pro-Clinton group ‘Correct the Record,’ responded to Paul's speech with spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod saying in a statement, ‘Rand Paul's brand of extreme isolationism would foster global instability.’ She said ‘Americans want a tested and proven leader like Hillary Clinton.’”

New York Times: First Draft: “Group Backing Netanyahu Will Air Ad Attacking Hillary Clinton”

“The first television advertisement of the 2016 presidential campaign cycle to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, will have its debut this weekend, paid for by a neoconservative group that strongly supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.”

Lancaster Online: “Sen. Casey expects Clinton to be Democratic nominee” 

“His spokesman, John Rizzo, responded with that message to an email Friday morning inquiring whether Casey’s spike in appearances on national news outlets was a precursor to a 2016 presidential run. ‘No. Senator Casey loves his work in the Senate. Senator Casey expects Secretary Clinton to be the nominee,’ Rizzo wrote in the email but would say if the senator will throw his support behind Clinton for the nomination.”

CNN: “Hillary Clinton stacks March schedule with women's events...”

“After a handful events in two months, Hillary Clinton has filled her March with a mix of women's events, nonprofit speeches...”

Politico: “At CPAC, Republicans attack Hillary Clinton from every angle”

“Republicans eager to derail a Clinton 2016 campaign, like those flooding the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center here, see the panoply of critiques as a show of force against a candidate they insist is more vulnerable than her allies realize. Watching warily from afar, however, Democrats eager to see a Clinton presidency cast the attacks as a sign of confusion in the GOP, predicting the mish-mash of arguments will fail to jell and dent the former secretary of state’s image.”

Politico: “Rick Santorum makes a Kenya joke about Obama”

“He called out President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in particular, two perennial targets at the annual gathering of conservative activists.”

New York Times: “Bush Confronts Skeptics at Conservative Gathering”

“Notably, while Mr. Bush criticized President Obama and Democrats, he was chiefly focused on delivering his own message. This was an exception at a gathering where many presidential aspirants delivered scathing attacks on Mr. Obama and, to a lesser degree, on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee in 2016.”

 

 

Articles: 

ABC News: “Rand Paul Wows CPAC Crowd, Talks Privacy, Tax Cuts, Hillary Clinton”

By Shushannah Walshe

February 27, 2015 2:47 p.m. EST

Sen. Rand Paul got a rousing reception this afternoon at the Conservative Political Action Conference, lighting up a crowd that tends to have a libertarian streak to it, saying, “In the coming weeks, I will propose the largest tax cut in American history.”

Speaking with rolled-up sleeves, he promised to pitch “a tax cut that will leave more money in the paychecks of every worker in America. My tax plan will keep the IRS out of your life and out the way of every job creator in America. My plan will also cut spending and balance the budget in just five years.”

Paul, R-Ky., blasted Congress, now controlled by Republicans, calling it “dysfunctional.”

“Often, bills are plopped on our desk with only a few hours to review,” he said. “No one, and I mean no one, is able to read what is in the bill. I propose something truly outrageous: Congress should read every bill.”

The crowd was packed with supporters, and Paul was interrupted by chants of “President Paul, President Paul.” He perhaps received the loudest applause when talking about personal privacy and going after the woman he may face if he they both choose to run in 2016: Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary’s war in Libya is a perfect example,” he told the CPAC crowd in National Harbor, Maryland. “Hillary’s war made us less safe," adding, "Libya's less stable."

He said to cheers: “It’s time for Hillary Clinton to permanently retire.”

Calling the crowd “lovers of liberty,” he asked them to “rise to the occasion.”

“You do have a right to privacy," he said. "Your rights are who you are, your rights are what you are, your rights are in your DNA -- and the government can, quite frankly, get over it.

"I say that the phone records of law-abiding citizens are none of their damn business," he added. "From within, our freedom is threatened by debt and by a government that regulates everything that moves.”

He differed in some ways with other Republican presidential contenders who have taken the stage at the conference since Thursday, specifically on the issue of foreign policy -- an issue that may make him an outlier in the GOP field, but was well-received by the libertarian-leaning activists gathered.

“At home, conservatives understand that the government is the problem, not the solution. But as conservatives, we should not succumb to the notion that government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad,” he said, "that a government that can’t even deliver the mail will somehow be able to create nations abroad. Without question, we must be strong. Without question, we must defend ourselves. I envision an America with a national defense unparalleled, undefeatable and unencumbered by nation building.”

He ended the speech by asking the crowd to “stand” with him: “Will you fight for freedom? Will you vote for freedom?”

Paul is popular with the CPAC crowd. He has won the CPAC straw poll the last two years, and his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, a three-time Republican presidential candidate, won the straw poll in 2010 and 2011. This year's winner will be revealed Saturday.

However, Paul received some criticism today at CPAC, even if it was veiled. 

Right after Paul spoke, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a 2012 presidential candidate, took the stage. Santorum didn’t mention Paul’s name, but in the past he has said he thinks possible candidates like Paul, as well as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas -- all in their first terms -- do not have enough experience to be president.

He said it was the president’s “profound lack of experience that has created the problems for us here in America,” stressing his own “eight years of service on the armed services committee” while he was in the Senate.

"Commander-in-chief is not an entry-level position,” he said. “[The] Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training, not in times like this.”

The pro-Clinton group "Correct the Record," responded to Paul's speech with spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod saying in a statement, "Rand Paul's brand of extreme isolationism would foster global instability."

She said "Americans want a tested and proven leader like Hillary Clinton."

 

 

New York Times: First Draft: “Group Backing Netanyahu Will Air Ad Attacking Hillary Clinton”

By Maggie Haberman

February 27, 2015 3:27 p.m. EST

The first television advertisement of the 2016 presidential campaign cycle to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, will have its debut this weekend, paid for by a neoconservative group that strongly supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

The ad is being purchased by the Emergency Committee for Israel, a group started by William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who has been deeply critical of President Obama and of Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state.

It is being supported with a small advertising buy: about $200,000, mainly on cable networks, beginning with the Sunday news shows and running through Tuesday, with some placements during the morning shows on two broadcast networks. There will also be a digital component, according to an official with the group, although it was unclear what portion of the dollar figure will be spent online.

The ad comes less than two weeks after a Republican group, American Crossroads, began running a web-only advertisement critical of Mrs. Clinton.

The new saber-rattling ad is harshest with Mr. Obama, but its main target is clearly Mrs. Clinton. The commercial ties together the Obama administration’s nuclear talks with Iran and Mr. Netanyahu’s scheduled speech before Congress at the invitation of House Republicans, which has been met with protest from Democrats, a number of whom plan to boycott the address. The ad then turns to Mrs. Clinton, who has not spoken publicly about Mr. Netanyahu’s speech.

“Does she support the boycotters, or is she too afraid to stand up to them?” it asks.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton did not respond to an email for comment. A White House press aide did not respond to an email.

Mrs. Clinton wrote extensively about her sometimes contentious dealings with Mr. Netanyahu in “Hard Choices,” a memoir that she promoted heavily last year. But she also forcefully defended Israel in its conflict with Hamas in a widely discussed interview with the columnist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.

While Mrs. Clinton is not expected to seek to distance herself from Mr. Obama on domestic policy to a great extent, she has pointed to areas of disagreement with the administration on global issues, and she is historically more hawkish than the president.

With foreign policy potentially playing a bigger role in this presidential campaign than it did in 2012, Republicans have long planned to try to make Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state a liability. And top Republican operatives have spent months discussing the possibility of airing ads before Mrs. Clinton officially begins a campaign, to try to define her before she openly starts to present herself to voters as a candidate.

“The Obama administration has launched an all-out assault against the Israeli prime minister,” Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, said in a statement. “Friends of the Jewish state ranging from Joe Lieberman to Elie Wiesel to Shelley Berkley have rallied to his defense. Hillary Clinton has remained silent. It’s time for the former secretary of state and prospective presidential candidate to come out of hiding and tell us where she stands. Does Hillary Clinton stand with the boycotters or the supporters of Israel?”

 

 

Lancaster Online: “Sen. Casey expects Clinton to be Democratic nominee”

By Karen Shuey

February 27, 2015

There may not be any official candidates for president yet, but Sen. Bob Casey is betting on Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee.

His spokesman, John Rizzo, responded with that message to an email Friday morning inquiring whether Casey’s spike in appearances on national news outlets was a precursor to a 2016 presidential run.

“No. Senator Casey loves his work in the Senate. Senator Casey expects Secretary Clinton to be the nominee,” Rizzo wrote in the email but would say if the senator will throw his support behind Clinton for the nomination.

Poll after poll shows Clinton is the safest bet.

Public Policy Polling’s newest national survey finds Clinton leading all of her potential Democratic challengers.

The poll, released Wednesday, found that 54 percent of the party’s voters want her to be their candidate to 16 percent for Vice President Joe Biden, 12 percent for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 5 percent for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 2 percent for former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and 1 percent for former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Clinton has more than 50 percent support for the nomination from almost all demographic groups tracked by the poll. The only two groups where she falls a bit short of that mark are men and middle-aged voters.

The former secretary of state is also ahead when the poll pits her against potential Republican candidates.

She has 7 point advantages over Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. An 8 point advantage over retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. And a 10-point lead over former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

The poll surveyed 691 registered voters, including 310 Democratic primary voters, from Feb. 20- 22. The margin of error for the overall survey is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, and for the Democratic primary component it’s 5.6 percentage points.

 

 

CNN: “Hillary Clinton stacks March schedule with women's events, a paid speech”

By Dan Merica

February 27, 2015, 2:15 p.m. EST

After a handful events in two months, Hillary Clinton has filled her March with a mix of women's events, nonprofit speeches and at least one paid appearance.

In January and February, Clinton headlined three events -- only one of which was in the United States. But as Clinton moves closer to her expected 2016 presidential campaign announcement, the former secretary or state has at least seven events scheduled for the month of March.

Most of Clinton's events are focused on one thing: women.

Clinton starts her month by headlining the 30th anniversary gala for Emily's List -- a pro-Clinton organization that focused on helping Democratic women win elected office. At the D.C. speech on March 3, Clinton is expected to give a nod to the group's importance to Democrats and highlight the reason more women are needed in politics.

Emily's List has been energized by Clinton's campaign and has pledged to raise and spend more money than any other election cycle because of the prospect of a Clinton White House.

The following week, Clinton will headline two New York events tied to her 1995 speech to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing -- a speech Clinton regularly references in pitches to women. In that speech Clinton said, "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all."

On March 9, Clinton teams up with Chelsea, her daughter, and Melinda Gates to release a report through the Clinton Foundation that looks at "the gaps that still remain" in women's participation in the economy and politics.

The following day -- on March 10 -- Clinton will headline the United Nation's Women Empowerment Principles annual gathering in New York. Clinton will use the speech to outline the findings in the Clinton Foundation report and "reflect on progress made in implementing the agenda set in Beijing two decades ago," the organizers said in a release about the event.

On March 16, Clinton will be inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame at an event in New York. Clinton is not Irish -- her family is of English, Scottish, French, and Welsh descent -- but she is being hooded because of "her dedicated work on Irish Peace Process."

"Hillary Rodham Clinton is one of the unsung heroes of the success of the Irish peace process," said Irish America co-founder Niall O'Dowd.

In 1998, Clinton put together the Vital Voices Conference of women in Belfast, a body that pressed for a piece agreement. The former secretary of state cited her experiences in Ireland during a number of speeches in 2014.

O'Dowd is a longtime Clinton supporter, though,and was a member of her 2008 campaign finance team. Some Republicans have questioned how active Clinton was in the Northern Ireland peace process. The Washington Post Fact Checker wrote in 2008 that Clinton "seems to be overstating her significance as a catalyst in the Northern Ireland peace process, which was more symbolic than substantive," but that she did play "a helpful role at the margins."

On March 19, Clinton will headline her only confirmed paid speech of the month when she heads to Atlantic City for the American Camp Association, NY & NJ Conference.

Susie Lupert, the group's executive director, tells CNN, "Yes, just like most nonprofits and conferences, she is being paid for her appearance." But she would not confirm how much she is being paid. On average, Clinton makes between $200,000 and $300,000 per speech.

Near the end of the month, on March 23 in Washington, D.C., Clinton will be the keynote speaker at the award celebration for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting from Syracuse University.

Robin Toner, who graduated from Syracuse, was the first woman national political correspondent for the New York Times.

Syracuse Dean Lorraine Branham said Clinton is a "vivid example — like Robin — of a pioneering woman at the top of her profession."

Clinton headlining an event honoring political journalists is somewhat unique because for decades she has held a dim view of the profession.

In a 1996, according to the diary of the late Clinton confidant Diane Blair, Clinton said the media are "complete hypocrites." At an event in 2014, Clinton said "journalism has changed quite a bit in a way that is not good for the country and not good for journalism."

"A lot of serious news reporting has become more entertainment driven and more opinion-driven as opposed to factual," she said. "People book onto the shows, political figures, commentators who will be controversial who will be provocative because it's a good show. You might not learn anything but you might be entertained and I think that's just become an unfortunate pattern that I wish could be broken."

Clinton's presidential campaign has become a forgone conclusion and Democrats close to Clinton expect she will announce some official move towards the presidency in April.

 

 

Politico: “At CPAC, Republicans attack Hillary Clinton from every angle”

By Gabriel Debenedetti

February 27, 2015, 6:38 p.m. EST

[Subtitle:] Democrats suggest the varying attacks show GOP is confused about how to take her on.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Hillary Clinton couldn’t make it to the Conservative Political Action Conference because “we couldn’t find a foreign nation to foot the bill.” Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, insisted Clinton “likes hashtags, but she doesn’t know what leadership means.” And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush knocked her on conflict of interest claims involving her family’s foundation.

It was amply clear at the annual conservative confab this week that Clinton has eclipsed Barack Obama as the Republican residential hopefuls’ main punching bag. But it is the sheer number of distinct anti-Clinton attack lines that is raising eyebrows.

Whether onstage or off, Republicans derided Clinton from every angle. They cast the 67-year-old as yesterday’s news, brought up her husband Bill Clinton’s 1990s scandals, questioned the rationale for her expected run for the White House, criticized her high-dollar speaking fees, and, of course, lashed her over the Benghazi attacks.

Republicans eager to derail a Clinton 2016 campaign, like those flooding the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center here, see the panoply of critiques as a show of force against a candidate they insist is more vulnerable than her allies realize. Watching warily from afar, however, Democrats eager to see a Clinton presidency cast the attacks as a sign of confusion in the GOP, predicting the mish-mash of arguments will fail to jell and dent the former secretary of state’s image.

Both sides could agree on one thing: that the brewing questions about the Clinton Foundation’s funding — the theme gaining most attention at CPAC and among national political operatives in recent weeks — pose special danger for her. “The foundation stuff is real,” said a Democrat in Clinton’s orbit. “That’s hurting.”

Clinton has stayed relatively low-key in recent months, appearing in public within the United States for the first time just this week. She is expected to take a formal step toward a presidential run before the end of April, and her allies expect she and her campaign team will engage with such criticisms once she does. Republicans, however, cite her aides’ unwillingness to take on the critics now as evidence that Clinton is “hiding” because she doesn’t have a good response.

“Hillary barely comes out in public these days,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said on stage. “If there’s not a private luxury jet and a quarter million-dollar speaking fee waiting for her, you can forget about it.”

Republicans’ intense and long-standing focus on Clinton suggest many of them expect her to be a formidable candidate. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, for instance, warned a packed hotel suite of about 100 college students that Clinton has strategic advantages because she is a woman and could make history by winning the White House.

But as White House aspirants paraded through the convention center halls this week and riled up conservative activists from the stage, fellow Republicans brushed off the notion that there were too many arguments against Clinton floating around, pointing out that 2016 hopefuls aren’t expected to coordinate their messages.

“Democrats have a real problem if they are complaining about Hillary Clinton having too many vulnerabilities for Republicans to exploit. This is further proof of how flawed their candidate is and why she won’t come out of hiding to talk with voters,” RNC spokeswoman Allison Moore said.

Democrats pointed out that Clinton, a public figure for decades, has weathered numerous controversies in the past, and that it will be hard for any one issue to change perceptions of her so far ahead of the election, especially when Republicans are hitting her with so many separate criticisms.

“It’s more important to get [the campaign launch] right than to be out there to deal with all these one-offs,” said former Bill Clinton White House aide Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist.

The anti-Clinton messages were not limited to the main speakers’ stage at CPAC: posters trashing the former first lady line the walls; college-age Republicans frequently refer to Clinton as the enemy as they stroll the hallways; and the official schedule included a screening of an anti-Clinton documentary.

Republican 2016 hopefuls speaking at the convention center aren’t trying to sway independents; they’re trying to excite the GOP base, and a stinger of a line about Clinton is worth the barrage of attention it will get.

Speaking on Friday afternoon, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul fumed over the 2012 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, whose victims included U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. He called on Clinton to “permanently retire.”

“Hillary’s war made us less safe,” Paul said. “As Hillary was declaring victory in Libya, Ambassador Stevens was pleading for more security.”

Asked by conservative media personality Sean Hannity for a one-word description of Clinton a few hours later, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said, “foreign fundraising.”

Some of the harshest attacks of the week against Clinton have come from Fiorina, the sole woman in the emerging GOP presidential field, who appears to be positioning herself as its top Clinton antagonist.

Fiorina zeroed in on the Clinton Foundation and its relationships with foreign governments: “Please explain why we should accept that the millions and millions of dollars that have flowed into the Clinton Global Initiative from foreign governments doesn’t represent a conflict of interest,” Fiorina implored an energized crowd on Thursday.

Speaking next that afternoon, Cruz went a similar route, saying Clinton “embodies the corruption of Washington.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, continued his tactic of painting Clinton as a candidate of “yesterday.”

But amid the deluge of anti-Clinton talk, one unexpected argument in particular caught CPAC’s attention and set the crowd abuzz.

The notion was offered up by popular conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, who was tasked with helping rouse the sleepy activists on Friday morning.

“Why don’t we just call it quits?” she asked. “Jeb and Hillary can run on the same ticket.”

 

Politico: “Rick Santorum makes a Kenya joke about Obama”

By Nick Gass

February 27, 2015, 1:38 p.m. EST

The world is a dangerous and complex place, former Sen. Rick Santorum told the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, even more so than when he ran for the presidency in 2012.

He called out President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in particular, two perennial targets at the annual gathering of conservative activists.

“We don’t need just someone with a strong economic plan. Thanks to the Obama-Clinton foreign policy team, we have gone from a policy of peace through strength to a policy of leading from behind,” he said.

“In fact, the president’s popularity is so bad around the world today that I heard a source that the Kenyan government is actually developing proof that Barack Obama was actually born in America,” he joked.

Santorum broached the possibility of a GOP candidate facing Clinton in the general election next year. That candidate had better call “radical Islam” by its name, he said.

“The likelihood that we’re going to face a former secretary of state means that we need someone who has a long and deep understanding of the threats we confront, particularly the threat of radical Islam,” he said, adding that the president’s “profound lack of experience has created problems.”

“Commander in chief is not an entry-level position,” the former Pennsylvania senator said, touting his time on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Santorum called for boots on the ground to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as increased aid to Jordan and Egypt.

“We need to start by crushing ISIS. Now,” he said, using an alternative name for the terrorist group. “We must start in Iraq. We need to get ISIS out of Iraq. The first thing we need to do is arm the Kurds. Instead of sending them bandages and bodybags, we need to send them weapons.”

If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, Santorum warned, the U.S. will have failed in its negotiations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to Congress has become a political flashpoint, with many Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden, declining to attend.

“In the end, Prime Minister Netanyahu would not be coming to America, he would not be risking the most important national security arrangement that Israel has if it wasn’t for the fact that he believed in his heart that Iran’s and the United States’ nuclear negotiations was going to end up being an existential threat to his country,” Santorum said.

 

 

New York Times: “Bush Confronts Skeptics at Conservative Gathering”

By Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman

February 27, 2015

OXON HILL, Md. — Confronting a somewhat hostile crowd for the first time since declaring his interest in a presidential race, Jeb Bush on Friday reiterated his support for an immigration overhaul and for Common Core education standards, positions that are anathema to many hard-line conservatives who play an outsize role in some of the early nominating states.

But Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, also emphasized his conservative credentials, pointing to his efforts to curb spending during his two terms in Tallahassee and to create a business-friendly climate in the state.

The combination — refusing to bow on the more centrist positions he feels strongly about while highlighting his right-leaning record in office — offered a preview of the sort of primary campaign Mr. Bush intends to run. He and his advisers have styled it “inclusive conservatism,” and say they believe it will be crucial to win the party’s nomination and still remain viable for the general election.

Mr. Bush, appearing at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference here before thousands of activists — who gave Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin a rousing reception on Thursday, and broke out into chants of “President Paul!” for Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky earlier on Friday — offered language that differed sharply from the trail of presidential hopefuls who had preceded him onstage.

“The simple fact is there is no plan to deport 11 million people,” Mr. Bush said, calling for “a path to legal status” for illegal immigrants. He also said flatly, “No,” when asked if Common Core amounted to a federal takeover of education.

And he explained to a mostly white audience that Republicans should aggressively appeal to people “who don’t know they are conservatives,” mentioning minority groups and young voters.

Mr. Bush’s name was much discussed before he arrived at the conference, long an important fixture on the Republican political calendar. While he is not the front-runner in polls, Mr. Bush is expected to amass a large fund-raising advantage over his rivals. This perceived financial strength has created a sense of foreboding among some who say they fear that another Bush presidency would depart from conservative orthodoxy much as the first two did.

That hostility was stoked earlier in the conference. The conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham used repeated appearances to savage Mr. Bush — mocking his wife’s expensive jewelry purchases at one point — and nudged Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to swipe at him. And a succession of White House hopefuls drew implicit contrasts, citing their conservative stances on immigration and education and describing their roots as decidedly more humble than that of a president’s son.

Notably, while Mr. Bush criticized President Obama and Democrats, he was chiefly focused on delivering his own message. This was an exception at a gathering where many presidential aspirants delivered scathing attacks on Mr. Obama and, to a lesser degree, on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee in 2016.

Mr. Bush declined to give a prepared speech. Instead, he spent just under 25 minutes answering gently adversarial questions from the conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity about his policy positions and his view of the Republican Party.

Standing the entire time, Mr. Bush appeared considerably more animated and at ease than he did when delivering policy speeches this month in more staid settings.

Mr. Hannity brought up Mr. Bush’s support in Florida for offering driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and for allowing illegal immigrants’ children to receive in-state college tuition. Mr. Bush parried by saying that no such driver’s-license bill was ever passed, and that Florida’s conservative-dominated Legislature had approved the in-state tuition measure and that the state’s Republican governor signed it last year.

Mr. Bush was booed loudly a few times, but he seemed ready. “I’m marking it down as neutral, and I want to be your second choice if I decide to go beyond this,” he told his adversaries in the crowd.

Eventually, Mr. Hannity softened his line of questioning and allowed Mr. Bush to detail his record as governor from 1999 to 2007. Mr. Bush said he had run on conservative principles, recalled his expansion of school vouchers, and noted that he had ended affirmative action in higher education. He boasted that he had been called “Veto Corleone” for his spending cuts. And he earned laughter when he spoke of the budget reserves he had left behind: “No drunken sailors,” he said.

Though there were many skeptics in the audience, Mr. Bush was not exactly walking into a political lion’s den. There were a good number of his supporters in the audience, notably well-tailored and many of them wearing red JEB lapel pins, who did their best to drown out any catcalls with cheers and applause.

Hoping to pre-empt any mischief at the conference, Mr. Bush’s backers, including a group of lobbyists and advisers, worked with former aides from President George W. Bush’s administration to organize a caravan from Washington to the hotel in Maryland where the conference was being held.

After his appearance in the main ballroom, Mr. Bush addressed a smaller group of his supporters, who crowded a meeting room. Mr. Bush sounded another pragmatic note, saying that Republicans needed to remain unified despite their differences.

“A campaign should be about getting to 50” percent, he said, “not trying to tear down the differences between the 35 or the 40.” He added: “Last time I checked, in a two-person race, you got to get to 50.”

 

 

Calendar:

 

Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official schedule.

·  March 3 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton honored by EMILY’s List (AP)

·  March 4 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to fundraise for the Clinton Foundation (WSJ)

·  March 10 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton addresses United Nations Women’s Conference (Bloomberg)  

·  March 16 – New York, NY: Sec. Clinton to keynote Irish American Hall of Fame (NYT)

·  March 19 – Atlantic City, NJ: Sec. Clinton keynotes American Camp Association conference (PR Newswire)

·  March 23 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton to keynote award ceremony for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting (Syracuse)